Charles Parker Wilber (1883-1954) received the Pugsley Silver Medal in 1937, “for active and efficient services as director of the New Jersey Department of Conservation and Development in the Improvement of the State Forests and Parks for Forest Management and Public Recreation.” He was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers Preparatory School and went on to graduate from Rutgers University with a B.A. in 1905, Yale School of Forestry in 1907, and earned his A.M. at Rutgers in 1908.
He was employed by the William M. Ritter Lumber Company in Maben, West Virginia in 1907-1908, and worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Ogden, Utah, as a forest assistant from 1908-1910. He became assistant forester and state fire warden in the New Jersey Forest Commission in 1911.
In 1915, he joined the New Jersey Department of Conservation and Development in 1915 as assistant state forester and state fire warden, and from 1922 as state forester and chief of the Division of Forests and Parks. When the department director retired in 1937, Wilber succeeded to that position.
Wilber was effective in enlarging and improving the system of state forests and parks in New Jersey and formulating a comprehensive plan for bringing the state up to par with neighboring states in the field. He retired as state forester in December 1953. He was well-known and active in professional associations such as the Society of American Foresters; the State Foresters Association of which he was president in 1930; New Jersey’s representative at the National Conference on State Parks, and president of the New Jersey Advisory Committee on Public Recreation.